Design Quest: Zone Phase 2. You make decisions.

Excellent work and excellent ideas in the Design Quest threads, all. Some new ideas and some back-and-forth emerged and we'll be making some decisions now to move this Zone forward into the Lore and design of Exiles. I wanted to give you guys time to work out some of the ideas that you were experimenting with before creating this-- the decisions thread, where we can hash out the ideas that bubbled to the surface and link to polls for vote decisions. If I've neglected to include any of your ideas here, PM me and I'll fix!

[] Which ideas do you love/hate/are indifferent to?[] Which ones really work together nicely? Do any not work?[] The Zone is very large (think of it as roughly 1/3 of Australia) so there is room for a quite a bit of variety even if we focus on the dominant features in this exercise, so what landform ideas all fit. Do all of them?

Also, throw in anything new you think of in the process, because we're not done yet.

However, to tempt your thinking-caps, check out this concept from @Hardcake that fits just perfectly with @Darggie's underground city idea...

Now, on with it! Let's make some decisions (and I will be jumping in as we head toward The Answers, so fire away with questions)!

Well of course I love all of my ideas...and I think the Wyverns, Mountain folk fit well with my ideas. I also think @Darggie's land features fit well with the inhabitant suggestions. As for flora and fauna, I think by the time we hit that thread we were all leaning in a similar direction and most if not all of those are spot on ideas.

I am not really a big fan of the pirates or the scorpions,I really just do not think they fit in with the rest of the area concepts, and I will be honest even my original thought or swamps and river folk does not really fit in well with this particular region. Also the volcano and the sand strewn wastelands are not really what I imagine in this area either.

I really think the Mountains, caves, underground city, and cliffs best define this region.

Agree, @Evilteddy on the flora fauna, seemed we were all going in a similar direction.

For those who were into pirates/slavers etc, do chime in. I'd like to think about them as other than "YARRR" pirates and more the sort of ruffians, bandits and ne-er-do-wells that might have cropped up in a land gone wrong over the years. And I do love where you're all going with the hidden bits of underground whatnot-- always fun to think about.

But I need to stay out of it, I will just keep watching and-- when I can't resist-- jumping in. What say you, @drakythe, @Finjinimo and the lot that riffed on sand-sails and such?

Aw... I like the smelly pirates defiling and repurposing something awesome like Petra.

I kinda saw the pirates as your post-apocalyptic scavengers and ruffians. More Mad Max, than Johnny Depp. The land itself I thought arid and rocky. Water is scarce and valuable. Whatever the details decided here, I think something along those lines will be fun. I also think that kind of vibe might give the houses a good NPC faction to rally against.

You know, "those stinky slavers have been wreaking havoc on trade for far too long, time to go clear them out". Which we do, with relish. But like a crinkle in fabric, or one of @TheWizard's silent but deadlies, they always creep back. Forvever lingering, never quite gone.

Pertinent question Wizzie: What level zone is this likely to be, and are you dividing zones up in a 'recommended level' kind of way? I ask because if this is one of the areas we encounter first, then we probably want easier npcs here yes? If it is an area that we encounter much later, than we'll want bad-ass monsters in it like the Wyverns. Or is that not even relevant to the design?

Bleh, I've been meaning to come back here and comment on everything, seems I fell far behind.

I like the idea that the region is arid and rocky on the surface, with perhaps the underground hiding a fair few secrets (The underground city/caves of @Darggie 's and that nice concept art). If water is scarce as expressed by @Finjinimo Then the large city being underground and located next to a lake/cistern (as it seems to be in the art) makes quite a bit of sense. Above ground it can be all sort of mad max type raiders and death to the unwary.

The rockier/mountainous areas of the region can be home to some of the more extreme flora, I'm of course partial to my bears, but unsure if they fit. I think the Wyverns (from @Alyxe) fit and might play a significant part of the region's culture.

And I just had an idea, completely out there, but what if like your freakin' spider wolves we combined the wyvern and bears? Like great winged serpents with the fore-body of a bear, complete with forearms, though somewhat sleaker owing to their need/ability to fly. (I realize forarms makes them not strictly Wyvern's anymore by some definitions, but its a hybrid animal)

Anyway, back to the culture of the region. The Wyvern (Wybern?) could be hunted, both as a show of skill and as a resource to be harvest. Their wings could make for excellent sails/hulls for the sand skimmers, and their scales might be coveted for armor. Anything made of the scales/wings would be of higher quality and much rarer than average, owing to the amount of damage their hides take in being hunted/killed. The slavers/pirates/Mad Maxes might even live in a cave on the cliffs (Finji's idea, again) where a next of wyvern's used to reside.

I'll need to read up some more for some other features, but these are the ideas I like/had so far. Definitely not do though.

Great clarification, Finji. These zones are very large from a geographical standpoint, so the preference is a GGCwCP (the common acronym for good gooey center with crunchy periphs).

@Drakythe, we'll have plenty of hybrid guys in this game (like our buddies the spiderwolves), so I encourage you to go down the wyvern route you started

BUT

not wyverns, pick another winged beastie. And not because we don't lurve us some wyverns. WE LOVE THEM. But they're slated for the Wildewoods Zone already (oops!). So brainstorm on with your hybrid idea and throw out some names (this goes for everyone, not just the illustrious Drak). You know I'm game...

I think and I'm pretty sure that it will be done right and combined together.

I like the idea of the pirates and I'm thinking that the cat folk were once actual cats kinda like planet of the apes type deal but different. Where I'm going with these two is that the pirates are after them mostly for their fur and to capture them as slaves seeing as to how they became land locked. The groves is where the cat folk hide. As for the rest of the ideas I am definitely going to say that they go well together. I'm not trying be biased but these are my thoughts and a little more background on both pirates and cat folk. Also if there's going to be class/race restrictions and you come out with the pirates as a class and when you come out with the cat folk as a player race the cat folk can't be pirates but they could be a class enslaved to the pirates if you do a background set up. If not then cool.

Trying to figure out a good flying alternative, don't want to just go sideways and say dragon/wyrm/drake.

Thinking maybe some sort of Gargoyle or Roc(Ruhk)? The gargoyle thing could be explained as some inhabitants long ago melded unliving stone onto living creatures, like bears, as a way to create some sort of unthinking magical attack dogs. After the inhabitants war was over they just let the creatures become feral through either negligence or cataclysm that wiped them out.

The Roc combination could be a result of the magical breaches in the area, or the general upset of the universe as reality warped.

I'm not totally convinced I like either idea, but throwing them out there, anyone wanna riff on them, or provide another take altogether?

I like a kind of gargoyle thing, especially if it was the result of some nasty experiment carried out around the time of The Big Bad Thing wizzie's evil first empire did.

Perhaps they could look kinda like the watchers from Noah (which is a terrible film, but had some interesting ideas). I just like the idea that they're real crusty, butt-ugly things, probably about the size of a large dog so you don't end up with cray-cray wing-spans.

What about Eagles? or some other type of raptor? I know in the flora/fauna post I posted a very large Mountain Eagle that could be very easily modified to fit many of our sadistic ideas that we like to come up with.

I like the eagle (crazy and tormented/made of rock or stone or like they were victims of some natural..or even un-natural disaster..think oil spill or in a fantasy world some kinda foul magic element or alchemical materials some one or such thing had been dumping into the local water supply, ditch, or forest type setting). The above eagle pic is great and kinda what made me think of this..good direction there in my opinion. BUT...as for raptors...or any other dinosaur for that matter..just kind of a pet peeve of mine when they are cast as enemy creatures in a game...just feels dinky/cheesy to me.

All in all, your list of current creatures inhabiting the zone, land & geographic features, and flora/fauna all sound pretty great and interesting to me..a great hodgepodge, this is always important to me..variety is absolute key to keep things fresh and impede a stale feeling..Flava! I continue to be impressed and surprised at how seemingly complex the features and aspects of this game are turning out, especially with (at least from my perspective) how simple..yet well done..the direction and mechanics you seemed to be going for in this game..as a mobile app and all.

I really like both as well. I like the idea that there are a couple/few critters with similar attributes (stoniness or what have you) to give the region a bit of a theme, while still maintaining the hodgepodge of different creatures.

Ohhh, that'd be a neat little piece of Flora. It could have a massive root system that got nutrients from decaying bodies, so most animals know to avoid it but as a cactus it is patient and doesn't require regular meals.